We published an Op-Ed in STAT last week. Here's how we did it.

We published an Op-Ed in STAT last week. Here's how we did it.

Dr. Avi Tuschman, founder and CEO of Crickit.ai, and I co-authored an Op-Ed in STAT on August 13. To publish an Op-Ed, whether it’s in STAT or any other major media outlet, you have to meet two conditions: 

1) your article must be viable
2) your pitching process must be effective

I’ve seen a lot of people write really good Op-Eds that never got published, solely because they failed when it came to their pitching process. 

Our pitching timeline

We started by pitching our Op-Ed to the Wall Street Journal on May 8. From there we pitched it to six other outlets, sending two or three follow-up emails to each before moving on. We landed the article when Torie Bosch, the First Opinion editor at STAT, accepted it July 1.

Here's the full record:

1. Wall Street Journal — Rejected May 9

2. USA Today — No response

3. Fortune — No response

4. Business Insider — No response

5. LA Times — Auto-acknowledgment only

6. Boston Globe — No response

7. MarketWatch — No response

8. STAT — Accepted July 1; published Aug 13

An opinion media strategy that integrates writing and pitching

Seeing that we pitched the Op-Ed to seven other outlets before we landed at STAT, you might be thinking that STAT accepted an article that first got rejected a bunch of other places. 

But the truth is the version we pitched to STAT wasn’t the same version we pitched elsewhere. Our draft got better and better as we pitched it.

We kept an eye on current events relevant to our topic, and periodically rewrote the opening of the piece to match them. We also looked at where in the article we could incorporate more recent evidence or fine tune our argument. All the while, our core argument stayed the same. 

In other words, we approached writing and pitching through an integrated strategy, where we were always pitching the most timely version of the underlying article.

In the first version that we sent to the Wall Street Journal, we hooked the Op-Ed to the peptide craze that was dominating the news at the time. Here’s the opening paragraph of that version of the Op-Ed:

“Social media is exploding with hype about peptides. The FDA hasn't yet resolved fundamental questions about the safety, effectiveness, or appropriate dosage of many peptide drugs sold online. But that hasn't stopped influencers from promoting them for wrinkles, baldness, brain fog, anxiety, fatigue, menopause, inflammation, allergies, or autoimmune disease. The result is a barrage of unsupported, misleading, and false claims, and a thriving market behind each one.”

For USA Today, we shifted the hook to the hantavirus and Ebola outbreaks–specifically, to the fake treatments influencers were selling for both viruses:

“Before the cruise ship where the hantavirus outbreak occurred had even pulled into port, influencers were selling ivermectin as the cure. Now Americans are being plied with fake Ebola treatments, too.”

We revised the hook again for Fortune, Business Insider, LA Times, Boston Globe, and MarketWatch:

“Amid outbreaks of Ebola and hantavirus, public health experts are warning people not to fall victim to social media influencers selling fake cures. That warning is warranted. But the larger threat lies in what influencers are doing between outbreaks: convincing patients to reject the standard of care for much more common, serious health conditions, from cancer and heart disease, to diabetes, obesity, epilepsy, and mental health conditions.”

And here's the opening in the version of the article STAT ultimately accepted. We saw that the Lancet Digital Health had just published a new model for predicting adverse events from statin treatment, and hooked the piece to that article’s publication instead. It turned out that that was our strongest hook of the different versions we crafted, because our Op-Ed already included a statin case study supporting the larger argument that influencers have turned misinformation into a business model:

“Over the last several years, fearmongering about statins has exploded, as misinformation alleges that they damage the brain, liver, and muscles, among other problems. Oxford researchers recently published a study in the Lancet Digital Health that should help with one common concern involving muscle disorders. Whether it ultimately does, however, will tell us a lot about the influence of online misinformation, and the scientific community's ability to counter it.”

Pitching persistence pays

I often hear from potential clients who wrote an Op-Ed, sent it to The New York Times, heard nothing back, and gave up, so it never got published. Even assuming they wrote a genuinely strong piece, the odds of publication with that approach are close to zero.

If you know how to write an Op-Ed, how to pitch it, and how the writing and pitching intersect, your odds of publishing any Op-Ed you write are essentially guaranteed. Using this approach, our team has published every health and science Op-Ed we've developed, whether for ourselves or for clients, over the last decade. That's the difference between an opinion media strategy, whether it’s for a CEO or a scientific researcher, built on one draft and one pitch email, versus a strategy that ensures your insights actually see publication.